Reporter covered nuke tests

Robert Myers / Journalist

LOS ANGELES » Robert Myers, an Associated Press bureau chief in San Francisco, Honolulu and Salt Lake City during a 15-year career with the news agency, has died. He was 76.

Myers died June 22 at a Los Angeles hospital from complications of kidney failure. He had been in and out of the hospital since Christmas, his wife, Lee, said Tuesday.

Myers was with the Associated Press from 1954 to 1969.

In Hawaii he helped cover U.S. nuclear tests in the Pacific and the 1961 disappearance of Nelson Rockefeller's son Michael during a trip to New Guinea. Michael Rockefeller was declared dead in 1964.

Myers, son of movie producer-director-writer Zion Myers, graduated with an English degree from the University of California-Los Angeles, where he was a sports editor on the Daily Bruin student newspaper.

He was drafted for the Korean War, serving with the military police in Korea and also working as an editor for the newspaper Stars and Stripes, his wife said.

"He always wanted to be a journalist," she said.

At the time of his death, he was living in Los Angeles and was president and owner of Los Angeles-based Myers/Smith Inc., a management firm for professional engineering societies.